Re: KDE 1.1 on debian/sparc
Tetchman@aol.com writes:
> [repost: original sent on 27th.April, but had problems getting through]
It got through, I just didn't reply, we've had enough KDE flamewars.
> In a message dated 23/04/99 19:09:17, Steve Dunham wrote:
> > Rick Tan <Rick.Tan@Eng.Sun.COM> writes:
> >> Is KDE 1.1 available for debian/sparc? If so, where can one get the
> >> packages?
> > I don't even think it's available for i386 at the moment. Aside from
> > not being free, it's not entirely clear whether it is legal to
> > distribute or not.
> My understanding is that it's completely legal to distribute, due
> to the Qt authors having announced an "open" style license (disagree ?). I
> think the issue is that the new license conditions don't quite tally with
> Debian's definition of "free".
One of the issues is that some of the KDE programs take GPL'd code
from other sources (e.g. ghostview). And they can't just go and
change the license on other people's code.
The new "open" style license on Qt means nothing until they actually
release a version of Qt that is covered by the license. (The old
versions of Qt are not covered by the new license - I have no idea why
Troll Tech made that choice.)
> > Even if there were i386 packages, there probably wouldn't be any sparc
> > packages because of lack of resources and interest. (The sparc people
> > are busy compiling other things.)
> What - like X and Gnome ? I appreciate that the Sparc people are
> mucho busy, but I think there would be a *lot* of interest in
> KDE-for-Sparc. In particular, we'd be interested, as we run a
> Sparcstation 20 under Redhat-sparc 4.2 at work, and need to update
> to a more up-to-date Linux. I'm *really* hoping it will provide KDE
> for Sparc. The RH6.0 announcement does mention both KDE and Gnome.
RH 6.0 does have KDE. I tried it out, saw nothing useful that I
wanted, and deleted the KDE packages to reclaim disk space. I'm not
wasting my time compiling it - the little spare time I have is better
spent on things that I want and things that can actually go into the
distribution.
There obviously isn't much interest in KDE by the people who can
actually build packages, or there would be some available by now.
If the licensing issues are ever cleared up and KDE makes it into the
dist, then the sparc autobuilders will take care of it.
> Of course, if Sparc Slink were production-ready, I'd rather go with that
> (that's why I read this list), but it doesn't seem to be. Am I wrong ?
Slink has worked since december for me. If production ready means
that it has KDE, then RedHat 6.0 is what you want.
> I don't have the skills to help out, so I'm afraid I'm just lurking here.
> > There are, however, some gnome 1.0 packages, which took a bit of
> > effort to compile. I encourage everyone .. [snip]
> Everyone seems to be saying Gnome 1.0 has been a bit premature ...
> Not being a tad partisan here are we ?
I'm a volunteer, I package the software that I want. I occasionally
do additional work, like merging the accelerated Creator support and
LEO support into our X package, making the official CDs, or help fix
glibc on old kernels, but it's my time, I can do what I want. It's
rather annoying, after sinking 100's of hours into this project, to
have someone come along and demand I compile software that I have no
use for and is not even free.
I have built package that were non-free or non-distributable (in fact,
I'm the Debian maintainer for "dungeon"), but it has all been stuff
that I wanted.
Steve
dunham@cse.msu.edu
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